It’s the part of a diet that is critically important: the size of a waistline. But getting out measuring tape to monitor whether this is growing or shrinking can also be inconvenient. Six college students are hoping to change all that by inventing a ...

Move over Tinder — a crop of dating apps in smartphone-addicted Asia is offering to recruit friends for group dates or send along a chaperone to steer the course of romance. While dating apps developed in the West often encourage one-on-one, no-strings-attached meetings, many ...

A new smartphone application produced by a Japanese insurance company can help guide people to safety in three foreign languages during natural disasters in Japan, company officials said Saturday. The app by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. will be available for free download in English, ...

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said Friday that it is planning to introduce a system for smartphones that allows visitors to Japan to get information in several languages on products they want to buy simply by scanning them. “Now that the number ...

Microsoft on Wednesday followed through on a promise to release versions of its Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs for smartphones running on Google-backed Android software. The apps, which hit shelves of Google’s online Play Store, build on a Microsoft strategy to make its applications ...

Nintendo played to “Super Mario” fans Tuesday while talking transformation as it strives to regain momentum in the video game market. “If there is a secret to the longevity of Nintendo franchises, it is transformation,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said during a ...

Apple’s iTunes helped change the way music-lovers bought their favorite songs, replacing plastic discs with digital downloads. Now the maker of iPods and iPhones wants to carve out a leading role in a revolution well underway, with a new, paid streaming-music service set to ...

Lee Chang-june can be miles from his 12-year-old son but still know when he plays a smartphone game. With the press of an app he can see his son’s phone activity, disable apps or totally shut down the smartphone. The app, “Smart Sheriff,” was ...

“Smart Relief” is a mobile app for parental control of Android smartphones. South Korea’s government funded the app, which alerts parents to possible bullying based on its monitoring of phrases and words used in smartphone messages and in online searches. The developer says it ...

A startup company wants to make your emails vanish forever — but in a good way. The firm, Confidential CC, has created an application that lets people send self-destructing messages from whatever email accounts they fancy. Unlike rival apps dedicated to sending messages or ...